Transcript

Announcer:

You're listening to the How to Entrepreneur. With Dylan Mentor. If you want real advice from real entrepreneurs and the professionals with the know how to make it all possible, you're exactly where you need to be.

Dylan:

Welcome back to the new Everybody New episode. New guest. Today we're covering an entrepreneur with some Mariana Trench depth knowledge about something. As entrepreneurs in the digital age we should be obsessed with if we're not already and obsessed with understanding and always learning more about. We're joined by the founder and president of Stealth Venture Labs, an elite team of digital marketers.

They've cracked the code on customer acquisition for e-commerce brands. Some of those are household names. He goes by the name Brent Freeman. Brent, welcome on. How are you?

Brent:

Thanks. Thanks for having me here, man. Really siked to be here.

Dylan:

Are you ready to take a short dive, that 30 minute dive into what it means to be a socially impact entrepreneur?

Brent:

100%. Let's do the best we can in that short time period. Let's roll.

Dylan:

Before we get into the show today, we're going to start you off with a word from our sponsor, Java Press Coffee Company. Are you like me in the sense that you don't make time to sit in line every morning for coffee? Good news with Java, Great coffee company. You can have the absolute freshest coffee delivered to your front door within 2 hours of coming off the roaster.

Have your coffee at your convenience. Java Best Coffee Company. Let's do it now. As I mentioned, you're a serial entrepreneur. Your first company wasn't stuff ninja. Like what was the what was the prequel? How did you get to where you're at?

Brent:

Very first. First company was a commodities import export firm that we were in downtown Los Angeles, actually Paul Hastings Building and Dubai. I was 22 years old. I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I saw an opportunity graduating college with a friend of mine and we took it. And, you know, entrepreneurship is all about running full speed into the dark and jumping off the cliff, not knowing if you're going to fly, float or fail.

And in that process, we were young enough and stupid enough to think that we could enter into an industry like that. And we did and successfully to a point and learned a lot and failed a lot. And that business ended up going out of business and the global financial crisis. And it was one of the best thing that ever happened to me.

And that's kind of a, you know, I call it a repeating pattern in my in my career as an entrepreneur is failing forward. And, you know, now I have the the saying of you win some, you learn some and. And so my first was commodities import export that failed and it just dovetailed into the next take the learnings that apply to brands and apply you know now co-founded or founded over 20 brands.

I'm just curious like we can I definitely want to get into the Venture Labs part of the story, but I want to kind of remind you, energy commodities trading as a 22 year old and it's like an international import export. I guess there's I know personally just trying to get stuff shipped here from another country and the United States.

That's a whole learning process. You deal with brokers, you're dealing with freight forwarders, you're dealing with that. And I'm assuming that's very service layer compared to actually trading. There's probably so much legality and so much business acumen that you have to learn that saying you like fail forward or you, you know, you learn from it is really an understatement.

Dylan:

There was probably so much information that you took in and it superseded any sort of college education about it prepared you for.

Brent:

So I went to USC and I was in the entrepreneur program at USC in the graduate center there, and I was very involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem on the the president, etc., etc.. But I wasn't a I wasn't a born entrepreneur. I think that there's a myth out there that that entrepreneurs are born. I think entrepreneurs are made, some are made earlier and have the lemonade stand to do that.

And it wasn't me. I discovered my entrepreneurial passion really stemming from I saw the world differently than others, and I thought that there was a better way to do things, a better way to run companies. Take care of your team members to solve problems, to solve challenges. And I've always been really passionate about the business side of how you start and create good companies, not just companies that make money, but companies that make an impact.

And so the commodities thing was there was a moment where I remember we took out a lawyer who came in and spoke in class. My buddy and I, and we started asking and we like, Hey, we take you to lunch. He was an entrepreneurial lawyer. And yes, we took about Westwood and we're like, What does it mean to form an entity?

What's an LLC? I mean, it was like stupid questions like that. They're not stupid questions important, right? But like, they were like really, really early stage questions and like, we like, what does that mean, a passive entity? And so we which is more long lunch, we were like, we have this idea, we have a contract, we think we can do this, you know, this commodities thing.

And he was like, after lunch he goes, Hey guys, the difference between a a preneur and an entrepreneur is action. Do you want to come back and start your company today? And he would he did incorporation and he's like I'll cut your deal And we looked at each other were like, yeah, so we did. And that's honestly the one of the biggest dominoes in my career.

We went back to his office and what we, we formed our first company that that day, that is for Cardinal Trading company and, and we were in business. And once you're in business, those big dominoes, you realize that the next hurdles become, okay, we're in business now, we're real now. Let's go. And we made 10,000 mistakes after that, you know, But that was the right mistake.

And I didn't overanalyze. And I was young at the time. And, you know, when you're young at the time, you value your parents opinion about things and you call them an answer. And I remember really, really specifically was one of the first things in my life that I really set out to make this independently. I'm not going to call my folks.

I'm going to do this myself. And this is me, a big boy, big boy decision and 3122 And it was. And so that domino of just taking bold action changed my career. And it's a it's a recurring theme. It's a point you get into these moments where you just got to take action. And it is scary because the fear of the unknown, if you look at the horizon, if you're standing out on the horizon, you can see it too, but it's not too miles to the horizon.

So like, what's over the horizon could be scary. It could be sharks, it could be storms, it could be whatever. But the unknown is what keeps those people from going after their dreams. Yeah. And really, the pot of gold is just after that unknown and really pushing through and taking that bold action to get to the other side.

Dylan:

So interesting. Very interesting. It sounds like a rite of passage of becoming an entrepreneur, an entrepreneurial, manhood, womanhood, whatever the case may be now. So at some point, the business, the business goes under. You guys have learned you're starting to realize, you know, the pot of gold is there. It's it's not this mythical thing beyond the two mile horizon.

And I think that for any entrepreneur, entrepreneur out there that has yet to identify in their industry or niche, exactly how to get to that point, keep working at it. It could take years, it could take days. It does exist. And it's just it's just a matter of being able to get to that point. Tenacity, you know, total persistence and maybe even having people around you to lean into people like Brent to listen to on podcasts that are going to help get you there.

But you start Venture Labs. I don't know how long after this one. Now you kind of switched gears. What was your idea going from commodity trading to digital marketing? Well, what was the main shift?

Brent:

So commodities business failed 2010, 22,010, not that range. And I any time something quote unquote fails in my life, I take a framework and say, okay, if it didn't have the outcome that I was hoping for when I started it, what is what is something that I can learn from this and extract from it to be able to apply moving forward?

Not all returns on investment are financial and and especially in the entrepreneurial world, we need to understand that the ROI oftentimes is in the learning most of the time and you just got to have a really dear friend of mine who says, You just got to survive the lesson. I ain't going to survive the lesson. And I really like that philosophy.

So I survived the lesson, which was that business film. We made a lot of money at age of 24. I was a multimillionaire on paper based, and then overnight we lost. And what I learned in that up and down was that money didn't make me happy. The pursuit of money didn't make me happy. The ends that money brought me didn't make me happy.

What made me happy was making an impact in the world that was positive. And I wasn't doing that. And I looked at the people in that industry that were the most successful, and I saw that they were chasing and creating lots of wealth, but they didn't have the one thing that I really was living my life by, which was happiness and joy.

And so I said, you know, there is something missing from operating the business. I really liked operating a business, and I was always really passionate about taking care of our team members and employees and creating health care for them from the beginning. And so I learned from that business that I didn't want to be someone who 20, 30 years down the line chase that has it all has the fancy cars, the houses, the jets, the whatever, but wakes up and is totally hollow and empty inside the relationships, right?

Yeah. So the shift into what I do now, Stealth Venture Labs. Fast forward 12 years later, 13 years later was really centered on I wanted to reinvent myself, taking the learnings of that failed venture and and I knew I wanted to continue to be an entrepreneur. I was and I knew that failures were the stepping stones to success, but I needed to extract what I what I didn't want to do and I didn't want to do.

What I did want to do is I wanted to do something that was cutting edge, leading edge. I wanted to do something that had dynamic upside. I wanted to do something where I could take care of my team members, employees and create a work environment that I'm really passionate about and that people love to work in. And I wanted to embed social good into the DNA of the business.

I wanted to make money and give back. At the same time. I didn't want to wait to make the millions and billions and then give back into philanthropic tax way. Yeah, I wanted to embed it into the DNA of all that I did. And so so that's what I did. So I looked at the world around me and I said, I really want to be in the Internet world.

This is 2010. And I said, I really want to be in the Internet marketing world. It was still it's still business and always was nascent in its formation, commerce and marketing and Facebook ads, you know, and things like that. And so I devised a vision to create an online marketplace like an Etsy, but for socially good brands, wanted to support brands that were giving back.

And I centered my life around that and set out for the next five years to build a tech startup in Los Angeles that was a online marketplace for social good brands. We were in Forbes, Mashable and all these amazing different publications. We had all the things going for us except for two really, really important things. Want to write fundraising, to write business models.

And when both of us hope that business to let out and I was left with again, none of the financial returns, but all the learnings and it was from those learnings that I then extracted, the value took time, got some whitespace, laid the puzzle pieces out on the table and said, What's next? And that's how my current company, I've been doing it for eight years, almost in a half stealth Venture Labs was formed and it was centered around taking all the knowledge of those those failures and applying them into a new business model that solves for those challenges.

And I created a platform that I knew that I would I would love to run and operate for many years.

Dylan:

Question Couple of questions. Yeah. So the first company you had, Cardinals, that was that just you and your co-founder, maybe you guys hired some more like administrative or staffing along the way, or did you actually build out a full scale team so people operating like you were?

Brent:

We had about five people, myself, my co-founder, a silent partner who was kind of help them refer some deals in and then a few people helping in the in the organization probably five or six people. And we had folks in a couple people in Dubai, and people working for us here is primarily us. It didn't get much past that.

Dylan:

Okay. And then the second company, I believe the name is Roots Roost.

Brent:

Yes, Correct. Roost. 

Dylan:

You probably tried to build out a bigger team or were you guys okay? 

Brent:

Yeah, we did. So but the funding was an issue. Now, was that an issue from an amount perspective or was it from the people you were getting it for? Maybe they put limitations on.

You know, it was an amount. It was an amount. It was it was it was a couple different issues. So we had 25 people in the end at various times the our maximum capacity. But the fundraising was a challenge. We were very fundable from a team and a people perspective and we had good metrics, but we were I didn't realize and didn't know that they knew what it.

No, we were just not playing in a large enough total addressable market. And when we showed up to Sequoia and Kleiner and all these big organizations, we got all the meetings, they loved us, but they just didn't like our market. And so we got what I call smile, shocked by the French all around town, Silicon Valley, L.A. everyone's like, Yeah, we love you with touch, Keep in touch.

I didn't realize that, that we were dead on arrival because our market wasn't big enough and that there's two types of companies. There's operating businesses, what people called lifestyle brands, which is not derogatory. And cash flow business is is great organization. You can build a lot of wealth and value there. And then you have like moonshots or Silicon Valley type brands of like fundraising, billion dollar market opportunities.

And we were somewhere in between. And we didn't realize that we didn't quite have a business model to be sustainable on our own, but we weren't big enough to be a, you know, like a full venture background. And so we raised about a million and a half dollars over five years, but in really small tranches. And it was never able to like forecast a project budget and hire the right people at the right time.

And then by the time we got our last tranche of capital, we went for it. And when we went for it, we started to grow in scale. We had the metrics starting the term sheets and it was bad market timing because the biggest competitor we had in the market, we were saying, Oh, we're this. But for that industry they imploded.

They were billion dollar valuation company, they imploded, laid off everybody sold for 15 million after raising like 500 and and that was it. And we ran out of capital. Our term sheets dried up and literally one day just had that was it was 25 people, 9 hours in one meeting. We were like a family is brutal and, you know, write checks and write people separates and say, go check, go cash.

This now is not money. So it's brutal. And then I spent the next year automating that business. I learned a lot, automating that business and paying back the past debts that we had there and kind of getting a soft landing. We sold the assets.

Dylan:

So what were the major takeaways from that? When going into Venture Labs was the ability to build a team? Was it to be more precautious? Was it market, you know, marketplace market fit well, what were that? What was in your head that you were secure with?

Brent:

Yeah, a couple of core things is that it doesn't matter how good of an operator you are, if your business model and your market aren't good or big in those respective matters, then you are you are in trouble. And so if you don't have the right business model that sets you up for success, it's going to be really difficult to grow in scale.

So we didn't we were like one time e-commerce was no recurring revenue. It was all ad which in an ad spend based and when market rates went up, it was and we ran out of money. It was like a cliff revenue. Second, being kind of the dovetail off of that is the total addressable market. We weren't we weren't in a big enough market to social good.
Shopping is kind of like adjacent to a lot of different markets, but it wasn't its own thing at the time. It's not the category that the way people shop, people like me things and then they like things that give back right in that process. Not like we find give back and then find stuff. We messed that up in the beginning.

Then it was as we grew in scale, we threw people at problems. What that meant is we over hired over. We didn't create systems, we didn't create processes. We didn't take the time to methodically go through and say, okay, there's a massive customer service problem, let's fix the customer service issue and the systems inside of there, how the ticketing and all that stuff works and the help centers and all that.

Let's just hire another agent, hiring an agent kind of agent. And so that was a rookie error because it caused us to run out of money and it didn't solve the problem because the problems got bigger and more people and it wasn't sustainable.

Dylan:

Yes. Exactly. 

Brent:

And then lastly, most importantly, was you have a business hypothesis and then you have market realities. Business hypothesis is a vision. We see the world. I think this can work. You get to market, you get punched in the face in some fashion. You get to listen to the way that the market responds and then the way that the market responds to you are the market data and signal and you get to listen to that and then you get the opportunity to adapt your hypothesis to the realities fit the actual needs of the market.

Yeah, we were too visionary in the market. I discussed this at the time. I'll be honest, we're just too stubborn and didn't understand this. And I was I was itching for responsibility to step in. This is the vision is the way I see the world. No, this is where I raised money. But we had market signals for 90% of our sales we were really selling was in the yoga vertical.

We had pivoted to be a yoga based marketplace. The marketplace we would have been $1,000,000,000 company by now, 100% early on in the yoga market. It just like it was all writing on the wall for us, but we just didn't. We I didn't listen to the market. I was too stubborn. And so out of all of that, I actually closed up shop.

I took all the data and took a long weekend in the mountains. Took my dog turned off my phone and pored over all the data and said, This isn't going to bring me the financial returns, however, I'm going to come out of this earnings. And so I was learning as I extrapolated these five, what I call new venture criteria, core common denominators in direct to consumer brands that are and actually wrote about this, an entrepreneur and that are the common denominators of brands that that same product market fit and scale and it's really really really simple they're as follows.

One is you have a passionate audience. It's clearly defined. And that's that really is defined as if we were two strangers meeting at an airport bar. We start talking about something, right? If you're like a fan and I'm like a fan of your work and I'm aware of and we don't know each other, we're going to geek out, right?

Clearly defined, large, passionate audience. Second one, it needs to be a large interest group. It needs to be big enough to be able to have enough market to be able to market to those two niche. You're not going to be able to get enough scale and you're not going to make it paid engine work. Third is you need to have a unique value proposition, something in there that gets their attention.

It's just the needs can't just be a me too product. It needs to be something that comes in. And one of our clients, MUD\WTR is a very unique product. It is a coffee alternative that is using mushroom extracts and chai tea and some other blends to help people wean off of kind of the coffee addiction and sleep better and things like that.

Super, super, super unit. The fourth is compelling unit economics and that means you need to have enough gross profit margin and it needs to be cheap enough and affordable enough for the customer to afford it at one point. And enough gross profit margin means 50% or greater gross profit margin. You need to have enough in there to handle a customer acquisition engine.

It typically takes on a subscription product about two or three months to pay back your customer acquisition cost. The acquiring mechanism is too low. The margin you're never going to be able to kickstart an engine. And then lastly, the simplest and the hardest at the same time must solve customer pain. You'd be surprised how many brands I've started.

I've seen we've been a part of we out there that just like are nice to have in some fashion and we convince ourselves. And when the going gets tough, like things that happened in Colgate and all that nice to haves go away it it's so the solving the pain those five or the core learnings that we've now applied in the South and beyond.

Dylan:

I really help you to just anger some of the listeners right now thinking about their own product or their own idea. I hope it's not.

Brent:

Honestly. God, I hope. I hope I'm giving them a reality check as my goal in life is to help other entrepreneurs to be successful and grow. And hopefully they take a hard look and say, Wow, is do am I missing shortcuts? Yeah, we spent we spent tens of millions of dollars in media against those and with our own brands and with other brands.

And what I can tell you unequivocally is you're missing one or one is kind of there. It's not there. It really is a determining factor. At some point, you're going to run into major roadblocks, if not already, be there. And so we use those five criteria as the North Stars to help people set up for success. And again.

Brent:

Awesome. And it does it does that sort of does that translate into the brands that you take on? Let's say you've got a brand that you know, oh, we're $1,000,000 idea, but you guys are, you know, the limitations to some extent for a product just looking into the market and, you know, checking all five of those boxes, does that sort of set the tone for whether or not you guys will take on a client if there's not a $100 million opportunity there?

Yeah. So at that Stealth Venture Labs, we have three different labs and it's important to answer that in conjunction with which lab we're talking about. We have our growth lab. It's our it's our traditional growth marketing agency. There's nothing traditional about it. We're like a full stack stack stack augmentation firm to help brands grow and scale brands like Factor_75, HelloFresh,  MUD\WTR, Crocs, Poo~Pourri, brand names all the way down to the names, all the way down to brands you've never heard of, but that are doing really well.

They're coming to market, so we are stage agnostic. It does need to be household mix. That's growth marketing. And then we have our founder lab in our founder lab that is our 0 to 1 face. We help early stage brands and ideas come to market, find their first customers, iterate quickly, get to their product market fit and scale, usually graduate into the growth brands inside of.

There are our founders that have ideas that need help coming to market, translating into reality. And one of our our big projects is with Kevin Hart VitaHustle. And it's it's kind of like a ketchup alternative, but it's a superfood for our team and we help them take that concept, bring it to market, come into like the tactical build of Shopify, find the service customers grow and so that's founder that.

And then inside of Impact Lab, we teach all of those things to inner city kids. It's our nonprofit that's our social platform and we teach that to inner city kids and give them $5,000 grants to be able to learn and grow and try it on the ground. So to answer your question with that umbrella, to understand it is is we are stage and company agnostic.

We help people who are in the idea phase or have a concept that's not quite work, can retool, reconfigure to be able to hit that slipstream. And then we help brands that are already in their growth cycle somewhere. Even if you have those five, you hit growth plateaus. It doesn't happen linearly or just hockey stick its growth projects, right?

Sometimes it's kind of stagnant up and down. So we help them scale through those growth plateaus by by anchoring into the fundamentals of psychological positioning. A lot of things we do is psychological based marketing, psychological positioning that tie in to those five. So it's a little bit of a complex and maybe we teach those five as the fundamental to the million dollar MVP.

We call it really not MVP to our the kiddos that we we teach in our nonprofit. So it is it is pervasive and all that we do.

Dylan:

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Your blood sugar naturally guaranteed. Go to sane solutions dot com Today. Awesome. Okay, so there is a running theme there. If there is potential, whether it's, you know, with the kids, with the brands you work with or with the founders, you know going to market, you guys are capitalizing on potential and in being able to add that North Star, it definitely makes it a little bit easier in the grand scheme of things when you know which direction to head in and you're someone that has worked with, I mean, just as I think you said, corporate fabletics hellofresh my water, I mean those are big, big brands.

So I mean, I'm sure that you've you've seen it, you know, you've been able to see it in different industries. I don't know if that if that only really applies to the e-commerce side of things. You're staying that way. I don't know how brick and mortar involved you guys have gotten.

Brent:

Yeah. To brick and mortar has become even more click and mortar as they call it. Right. Right. Think you have to you know, you had it you had to like, adapt and co-create in some fashion. And so the difference is, is how your traffic comes through your physical or digital store traffic coming through your physical stores is typically in a browsing or I need this, it's high content and they come in and they're searching for it or it's in the discovery mode and they see something that they like.

And the next best alternative is I don't leave it today. I have to order and wait for it. And so there's a physical being there that that changes behavior online. You could open a thousand tabs. You can look up RetailMeNot coupon codes. It's genius. And so it's just a different psychological behavior. But the same stuff is rings true, which is if you're not solving some sort of customer pain in some fashion, you don't have good margins.

You're not creating something unique for a passionate group of people. Chances are it's going to be very difficult to be a generalist today. It's very, very, very difficult to grow and start, you know, a generalist store. Right. Even impossible. Impossible. And even Amazon started as a specialist.

Brent:

But college bookshop. So So I'm assuming that you didn't start off with the major, the big brand names, the household names, your first companies, you know, when you were first when you were first gaining the agency, was it just you and a couple buddies? Was it really build? Yes. A staff of skilled digital marketers. What was that like?

Self-funded. From the beginning, they weren't customer finance. We just brought value. We just brought value and got paid for it and then builds and builds and then built. And that's certainly harder, right? I mean, it well, it's different kind of continuity because you can't do all the things you want to do from the beginning, as you know. But but you have to be smart with a doll and you have to stretch it.

You have to really listen to the market. So that's how we started. And it was.

Not for a lot of people. You don't you don't get the chance to make as many mistakes.

So I can't say I'm honestly right. But, you know, we started from our network and we said this is what we're doing and we kind of bring the network and we got referrals and people came to us. And for the first four years of this organization, we didn't have the three labs. That's kind of like a kind of a new growth thing that we've done the last few years.

We were just co-founders. We just came in as your co-founding Marketing Organization and Team. We earned equity with a little bit of cash and we help brands come to market, find product market fit and scale, and then we start every two years or so. We start our own in-house sprint. And so and it's, you know, they're small brands or cashmere based businesses typically that is small.

You know, we have a couple that are an eight figure run rate now that have done really well. We've several that have gone out of business. Right. And some better kind of in the seven figure run rate and trying to get out.

So that's awesome. So when when you're growing like that, you guys are considering yourself like a boutique agency more or less small group. How do you how did you how did you transition and what was the turning point when you guys really, you know, transcended from, you know, we're, you know, doing seven figures for certain companies to, you know, we just took on our first major brand.

Dylan:

What was that like?

Brent:

So the first major growth story from a household name perspective was a company called Home Chef and their meal kit delivery brand, and they had just fired their CMO. I got introduced to their CEO. They were only shipping to the Midwest and East Coast, doing about $8 million in revenue, and they were trying to expand to the West Coast.

They were very behind a lot of meal delivery companies in the market. You know, you had HelloFresh and Blue Apron and plated and I mean you had there was like ten others above them. And what they did have going for them was a really smart, savvy operator with CEO. They had some good investors. And then we right place right time for our team and it was this is eight guys, one plus one equals 100 moment.

We came in and because we had been operating businesses on e-commerce for the operator seat in a 360 degree manner, we weren't learning on their dime and we weren't just operating in a silo. We didn't have junior people, most marketing agency and our junior people, people have really been on the client server side. They never done it before.

In our companies, we have people who've done it before. They they're not learning on our clients. Diamond So they're accelerating growth, not trying to, not trying to get we are accelerating growth for our clients in a manner that is significant in terms of the onboarding. And so when we came into home homes, they were trying to raise A series B and we took them from spending about $50 a day on Facebook ads to about $2,000 a day and eventually a $50,000 a day on Facebook ads.

And we took it from 8 million in annual run rate in revenue to 100 million, and then help them as partners, hire and build a team in house to places where we pass the baton. And it was a very beautiful partnership. Over the course of about two, two and half years, that became a wild success story for them.

They ended up selling to Kroger's in 2018 for $750 million, and we were critical piece of that of that growth curve early on. And we got to see how that growth plateau, one plus one equals 100 moment can really accelerate. And then we did it again for factors like 75. We did get to 5 to 2 years ago, that same type of scenario came in selling them and they sold tallow fresh during the pandemic.

Dylan:

That's amazing. So. QUESTION So you guys have the you have the two different labs that specialize in scaling. Is there is there sort of a threshold? I know that I think you just said they were spending 50% of spending $50 a month or $50 a day. What's the what's the low threshold for the like that? That one's looking for the slipstream.

And then for the big name brands, what's the minimum threshold for those for people wondering.

Brent:

It's all case by case basis, right? So if it's a young brand that has money to grow and spend, it is really trying to ramp up. They might be spending zero and we help them build their media plan and grow in scale. If it's a bootstrapped brand, an entrepreneur that says, I have something, I'm trying to get some some customer acquisition moving, we typically like and advise them to spend the first 10 to $20,000 of media per month on their own because no one knows the brand better than them.

No one knows how to position it better. No one's going to spend that money the best way possible. And typically, what happens when an agency comes in to something that doesn't quite have product market fit yet or doesn't have momentum on it to grow in scale is there's a lot of time and money wasted on getting data around how to adjust the product and the price and the promotions and the positioning and all of that.

And usually early stage entrepreneurs don't have the financial patience to wait that out. That product that can take 2, you know, 3 to 6 months sometimes to figure it out. And so we like to get involved when someone's like, I can't I got to tell you, I can't do this anymore. I need someone who can do a better, more efficiently, you know, with scale it.

Now it's more complex than it ever was for me to diversify into other channels, etc., etc.. We handle all of that on the Growth Lab side. Okay? If an entrepreneur has an idea, they don't know how to take it to market and they have some capital behind it and they're wanting to invest into someone to help them position it right, the right concept statement, bring it into those five criteria and then build their founding storefront with the best foot forward and then start the early stage media of trying to find the product market fit and broad scale.

That's where our Founder Lab comes in. And that's kind of the incubator accelerator, right? And the other the other one that I described as more of like the, the growth marketing agency.

Dylan:

Yeah. Okay, perfect. So we have a we've got I think you said what was Kevin Hart's top?

Brent:

VitaHustle, right.

Dylan:

And I also heard you say five latitude. That's Fabletics too, right?

Brent:

Yeah, he has. He has a Fabletics connection. We have a lot of staff and team from the L.A. e-com scene that came out of the textile fashion group who were a part of that amazing story. I mean, L.A. is a very tight knit time ecosystem where we all were. And I came out here in residents at a venture fund in L.A. with a lot of the LPs were from that group, too.

And so a lot of our crew and stuff comes from that world that we're early on and just Fab shoot as well. Fabletics the those brands. Yeah, but with with stealth, we work with the Russell Brand specifically.

Brent:

Okay, cool. So is it safe to say that you guys kind of work with socially or socially or sustainable products, forward type brands?

We do the absolute dang best we can to try to support those brands. I mean, my is a really good example of a socially conscious social forward brand that really, really cares about the environment, the world, its team, its employees. It's run by a leader that that is the real deal, authentic. So that's like best case scenario and it's super unique and it's in a massive scale mode.

And so we are privilege and honor to be a small part of that, that growth story in a way where, you know, the best scenario is when you have social good cause, right? You embedded in your cogs cogs. And when you do that and you have product market fit and you scale your profitability, your social impact also scales.

And that's the sweet spot that we love, love, love to be in, but we don't require it as an entrance into working with us because we use the dollars that we create and generate to give back to our team, to our employees, to our capacity, to our own nonprofit that we teach in to. And so the social good is embedded into all that we do.

So inherently, somebody that we work with is doing good by working with us in that fashion.

Dylan:

That's awesome. I love now that was articulated in the meaning behind it. I have sustainable products that we make and it's something that could very easily be made with, you know, preservative shock, just, you know, animal products. And we went, we went 180 with it. Two And if we want to be a part of that message, we also feel like the majority of people, at least in America, they're sort of on board with that message to 2022.

Brent:

You know, if you can and you're not, there's probably someone out there who is in right around the same price point and their brand is probably better. It just, you know, they it's that whole ecosystem of, you know, putting the product in a brand first that's sort of embedded into an I now that regardless of what you guys take on, you know, the output, it's for 360 it comes back around you guys redistribute the wealth in ways where it makes sense.

Dylan:

That's your first you're the first version I've heard sort of that is has a feeling profit output regardless of the input.

Brent:

You know it's been something for me today we call social entrepreneurs. But back in college, you know, I call it the philanthropy year, right? And my dream was to be a philanthropist, a philanthropist while being an entrepreneur at the same time. But I didn't want to, like I said earlier, wait to make the money and then get back.

I wanted to I wanted to be into one. And so, you know, for me, being a modern day philanthropy doer, it's really centered around how do we use business to create social change and how do you how do you use that social change to create good business? It's that cycle in there of the win win win across the board that is critical.

And I think, you know, is the is the only way forward not only to get consumer behavior perspective, but from a sustainability, from recruiting and hiring, attracting, retaining talent and all of that. And it's I just think it's the way that we we fundamentally change the world.

Dylan:

Yeah. And your business yeah we've we've talked about numerous things that sort of help building this this big beautiful painting of a business. You guys and and you as a founder has and you're sort of doing your part to your you're building your own brand, your own reputation. That's how scaling the company it's sort of you at the forefront of things.

I mean the leader you lead from the front, everyone follows by example. How important is branding yourself in not only to to, to the business, but to the people that you look up to in the business?

Brent:

The great question, let's start with in the business and my team, I'm not an entrepreneur because I'm so in love with digital marketing and ecommerce. Yeah, I'm technically excellent at that. That is a skill set that we've mastered and good technical side of it. I'm an entrepreneur for my team and to create a work environment where people are inspired, they can create and they can invest into that joy on a day to day basis, and that's hard.

And so from the beginning, one of the things that we've done is we have from day one, we've provided 100% of of health, vision and dental insurance for our all of our staff and their dependents. The best PPO, non HMO that money can buy so they can have the peace of mind that if there's a medical issue that comes up in their life, that they can solve it and have the right medical care.

That is not a short term cash flow. Smart decision. It is a long term right thing to do for our team and our staff decision. And so when we started to extrapolate and build on that, we've been remote for seven years by design. And so we were one of the first and in order to create those watercooler moments, we said we need to really intentionally design this organization in a manner that creates connectivity, creates appreciation.

So another thing we do is a similar to things like Five Languages of Love Day one, four, five, appreciation for language in the workplace. We have all of our team members take a quiz and our app pops the way that they feel appreciated in the workplace, right? Whether it be words of affirmation, gifts, There's no physical touch in the workplace, obviously, but there's, you know, there's other ones.

And so what we what we do is we actually publish that for our entire team in a matrix and spreadsheet everyone gets to see. So when they want to recognize another team member, they do so in the way that they feel. Appreciate it. Some people don't like words, information per public recognition. They like receiving gifts. We might give that person ten or $20 gift card to Starbucks or something like that, right?

Whereas another person might be a public shout out like, Hey, you did a great. And so intentionally designing the internal part of the organization creates a better place for team members to work, live and operate. We believe very much at work life balance. We don't require a staff and team to work nights, weekends, right? And if we are working nights and weekends, that means there's a appropriate process.

And so we go back and we fix that so we can limit that and get back to the homeostasis of a 40 hour, 40 hour workweek. And that, we believe, can create still phenomenal results for our clients. If we're smart, we'll be smart enough to kaizen continuous improvement process with sharpening of the saw of Stephen Covey's seven habits.

And so so when you look at that, it all starts with the internal team. So I've spent the last eight years I've been really honest, focused, very much internal, and over the last year I've started to pay attention to external branding. I mean, honestly, we were the cobbler that had no shoes, excellent markers for everyone else except ourselves.

And so we were true to our name in Stealth, right? So Venture Labs. And so over the last year or two, we've really got to manage never including things like this, like getting more appearances on podcasts and things like that, to be able to talk to people, to say we're doing something different and and it matters and our team matters and the impact we're making out here and we're growing brands and we're not perfect, not infallible, but we're really great people and we really care.

And, and, and we're we're very excited to tell the world more about what we do. And in that vein, in the last year, just last week, actually, we got notified from from INC that we were one of the top workplaces, best work, best workplaces for 74, 25 companies across entire U.S. We're one of them, which is awesome and a super honor.

And then last year, Fast Company listed us as number 26 on their global places for innovators to work ahead of Google, ahead of Disney. And so we're do a cool shit is how we told the world about it yet and so that's what this process is I'm super appreciative of you.

Dylan:

Yeah no, that's awesome. I mean, on the outside looking in, I'm excited. I it makes me reconsider. What am I doing? Everything that I should be doing. And I'm clearly not. I'm clearly not. I'm not going on. I'm not I mean, just from an infrastructure point of view and from a personal branding and allowing people to see into the company, maybe as it grows, but we're not quite where you're at yet, so I wouldn't make as much sense to dedicated fan.

Brent:

You know, the thing that the thing that I would say to you my unsolicited advice and that is that if you're passionate about something early on, build it in as a core tenant of the DNA of the brand from the beginning and the company from the beginning, because once you get there, it's much harder to go back and do that.

But as you build it in, it's a part of what you do and build on top of it. It becomes a part of the structure of what you are. And so it's giving back. Or if you know some policy, whatever, whatever you're passionate about internally, right. And build it in as a part of the DNA doesn't need to do anything about it right now.

Per se but you can take some small aligned intentional things in it, but it does require intention. It doesn't happen on its own right. You have to intentionally take that time to build it, have to be nights and weekends that could be working together and and it starts intrinsically from what your passion.

Dylan:

And are you building your organic growth status? You have a crunchbase profile. Are you doing that sort of optimization for yourself?

Brent:

We're in the process. We're in the process. You know, we're very much remarketing the ship as we sail on our own brand. And what I mean by that is like, you know, we're building behind the scenes for some really big companies and, and they are our clients in that sense are the number one priority over our own branding and marketing and in terms of the kind of order of operations and their team, number one period, end of story clients, number two, community that we serve.

And then it's like us, you know, at the bottom of all that. It's always as we as we look, as we look at all of that, we're we're doing the best we can. And, you know, you'll see like our he doesn't go back very far because we just started putting some energy, you know what I mean? And and so so yeah, it is it's one of those things that it's it's time and we're on it.

Dylan:

That's awesome. And, I saw that you had a video with Shopify. Now they don't just have anyone making videos. How does it has as a brand like personal branding got you that sort of opportunity or was that like a e-com connection?

Brent:

You know, I think that the my videos we just sent a bunch of them Shopify now of my videos person that I've done the expert stuff with Shopify was centered around domain expertise that I had, especially in the e-commerce scene over time, meeting the right people, creating good connections for them, Also understand what we've done behind the scenes and then being like, Oh, we need to extract that.

And they invited me over over the years to do various videos to kind of download some of these thing that I just was talking to you about. Time criteria, other things like that. And then fast forward, we started a brand in COVID really different, and I spend about two months to two months a year in Italy, and it's my passions that brings me joy.

I speak the language family over there from my mom's side. And when COVID shut down in Italy, I had a really close family friend who was doing tourist experiences in a little village outside of Rome, a possibility with her grandmother, 85 year old grandmother. They were the top Airbnb experience in the world, actually the best done right. And because obviously tourism.

And so she called me up and said, I want to bring this online. And I said, I got you so we can just as a friend, I built a Shopify store when skiing with the child that weekend, went skiing and then our world shut down, right? And that was March 12th of 2020. And then the online site that I built her Nonna Live just took off.

We took these live stream pasta making courses with Italian grandmothers, put it online, and created this whole wonderful two hour experience with translator and storytelling. And it took off and it did seven figures over the last couple of years, you know, because it was it hit those five. Yeah. And then Shopify took notice and they they saw the heartwarming story that was kindness and the story behind the hands of these 85 year old grandmothers were teaching people the art and love of making pasta scratch.

And they picked us out of 2 million merchants, Nonna Live to create a documentary on for their audience summit this last February, they flew a film crew out to out to Rome, Bratislava, another little town village outside of Rome. And they did a three week documentary, came here to town, went to our film and center in Miami for the olive oil brand that we have known as olive oil.

And they did this beautiful documentary that they use as the showcase of their 12,000 person All Hands summit in February. And then they bought a bottle of olive oil for every single one of their employees. And so the relationship which I was taught in college by a mentor of mine, a guy named Rob Europeana, and he was founded like a competitive tax, competitive and a Celebrity Express.

And he said something that stuck with me, which is your network is your net worth, you know, and I was 20 at the time when he told me, Isn't that the truth?

Dylan:

That's a bar.

Brent:

Right? And and I was like, and I've, I built that over my over my career. And so as we've slowly done good work and relied on our reputation and, you know, and really focused on providing value in the market and really taking a long term focus, we realized that our network has become our network and that that played out in that Shopify first video of experts of product market fit all the way through to them selecting us out of 2 million merchants on the known a live front to highlight us.

And we obviously changed the trajectory that that organization took.

Dylan:

Yeah, that's it's hard to listen hard to digest. You know you guys are out of so many merchants out of the story and you piece it together just you know, your connections there of all of the stars and the planets aligning and mercury not being in retrograde, but we're able to make that happen. That is that is it cannot be coincidence.

Brent:

Dude. That's a really important piece on this. And you know, I'm not a religious man, spiritual guy. I have a deep meditation practice and I'm not the sit cross-legged and say, all of that's not me. Right? It's just like get centered on my breath and get focused. The more that I've slowed down and the more that I've gotten comfortable bringing it full circle in this conversation to the unknown across the other horizon and that I've trusted in the universe, the more I realize the universe has my back, it's work.

And it's not necessarily in the way that I predict. Yeah, but all the hardships that I've been through, the failures, all of that kind of stuff, they have become the seedlings of the most joyful things in my life, given enough time and enough reflection. And so, you know, this idea of like surrendering to the universe is really all that means is like pretty bizarre.

Listen to the market. I listen to the markets, right? Same thing.

Dylan:

I'm assuming that you probably could could credit a few, if not all, of the the important habits for entrepreneurs. Another seven of them, which which ones do you think are if if you had to, you know, spread all seven out and think maybe three or two, which ones do you think would you would you really focus on.

Brent:

The two most important of those seven habits, I believe, is begin with the end in mind. Reversing. Yep. And sharpening the saw continuous improvement. Okay. So we'll call it again with the end of mind and growth mindset. Right. And because they go hand in glove, the rest of my opinion, my grandma had this great saying. She said I hated making my bad as a kid. Hated it. Right. And you wake up in the vegetable place and she said, You know, Brent, if you just get the four corners, the middle takes care of itself.

And in business, I've realized that that also is true. And so in this case, the continuous improvement growth mindset and begin with the end in mind, go hand in glove. And so beginning with that in mind means fast forward, you are eulogizing your own funeral, you are talking about how you want to be remembered, what is it? And we lose track of that.

We get so caught up in the bullshit of the day to day. We lose track of that. One day we all die back. All of us. Yeah. Fact no one's ever gotten around it, right? And so if we actually jump into that and scare the crap out of some people, that's kind of the idea. Like, Hey, center, what matters again?

How do you want to be remembered? Matters to you, you know, then and then work backwards from that. And if you work backwards from that with a growth mindset, which means I'm never done, there is no destination. The journey is the destination. And if I know that to be the case and I have this high Kaizen which continuous improvement mindset of growth on it and I'm going to continuously improve, continuously grow your creative upward spiral in your life that will get you to that end, that you're beginning with it so and so.

Those two, for me, I mean, that book is a must read. Seven Habits of Effective People Stephen Covey is must. But those two are the ones that are like, Yeah, yeah.

Dylan:

Awesome. But you what? I was going to, I was going to dive into a couple more things, but we are running short on time. So I should ask you, is there anything that I was we were supposed to talk about that we really needed to that we didn't know. Can we move into some more rapid fire.

Brent:

Now go from rapid Fire, You hear me.

Dylan:

Podcast entrepreneurs out there. I'm sure you listen to some or you look up one more.

Brent:

You know, I really love what Tom Bailey is doing. And, you know, Tom for me is a is is a real leader in how to take a conscious mindset training shift from how he was to where he is, to what he got to to what he's doing now and giving back and bringing a platform and exposure to really amazing concepts, ideas multidisciplinary across the board.

He's a really good interviewer. He's really curious how he does his research, and the guests that he has on are are honest people. So so that that for me is number one, I love what Louis is doing. It's greatness, you know, similar vein, different type of approach. Right? A lot of the same guests, not all, but a lot of the same.

Yes. Just different type of approach, but obviously very different backgrounds. Louis was a former football player. Professionally, Tom built a quest nutrition, billion dollar company, you know, very impactful. So I really do love kind of the approach of those two things you guys are taking. And then to get like really into like I love Sadhguru Yeah, I love Sadhguru His wisdom knowledge bombs in a funny, irreverent way, I think are really are really great, really.

Dylan:

And now this next question you have a better answer than most, even that you sort of reverse engineered things up to this point. Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Brent:

Yeah, so I'm in the it's good question. So I'm in the process of building a family. Your family for me is chosen and blood and my family is my chosen tribe, my chosen friends, the people who who nourish my soul, who I connect with, we go really deep with and we have these I don't have any space anymore for like, surface level bullshit.

I just don't. I have this really beautiful friend group of people that are just really loving and nourishing and connected to their chosen family. My my actual blood family. You know, I'm in the process of building with my girlfriend who will be my wife, you know, and will be somebody who we have a family children with, and build that family, as well as my aging parents and my brother and his niece and my niece and nephew, and making sure that those folks are deep part of my life.

So ten years from now, I want them to be part of my day to day, week to week. And that looks, calls and face times and family dinners whenever we can and really making and taking priority to connect and deepen those relationships on the on the health sides, my mind and my my body. I want to be in the in the most physically fit and mentally fit place I've ever been.

Yeah. I'm a you know, I'm 37 now. I'll be 47. I want to be the most fit and the most mentally active that I ever have been deep in my meditation practice. I'm doing multiple meditation retreats already. Do that once a year and be the most physically fit that I've ever been in healthy in my life.

Dylan:

It's not impossible.

Brent:

It's not impossible. Right. And in my in my career, I have four pillars that I can really easily have health, family, career, community. And so in my career, I look at both giving back and making money, and they're hand-in-glove. I hope to be in a place where I've transitioned more into investment and operating rather than in day to day three.

Yeah, I'm already making that transition, but over the next ten years I want to be squarely in that have my own son either own capital or with office and on the giving back side, I want to be I want a nonprofit to have scale and I want to affect a million people. A million kids taught them how to serve their businesses, and then community is personal and professional.

I just want to be deepening those relationships. I want to be helping other people, the listeners of this show yourself, others to be able to build that network because this only propagates if we can continue to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to take the same mindset. And so my whole family, career community, I very specific goals if you were to really drill into all of them.

But that's kind of where I'm at.

Dylan:

Yeah, we have Northstar and what can people go to find out more not only about Stealth Ventures but yourself? Are you active on Twitter or or anywhere?

Brent:

Yeah, LinkedIn. LinkedIn for me is my best, most active professional channel. That's the best place to reach me. I'm also on Instagram for on a personal friend. I'm not super active again. Cobbler has no shoes on that. Stealth is and we are increasing increasing that stealth venture labs dot com is our main website. People can email me if they're interested in working with us or knowing more.

It's Brent Dot Freeman Brent Dot Freeman at Stealth Venture Labs.com. We check it, we respond to it. I respond to it takes some time, maybe a couple of days or a week. But we do respond. And honestly, the best way for people to get in touch with me is going to be that email or on LinkedIn. Follow us on social channels.

We have a lot more that that is coming up.

Dylan:

And we'll make sure that we do all that in the show notes Brent Freeman Everybody founder and president of Self Venture Labs. Amongst a bunch of other stuff. We didn't get to talk about it much, but tell you it's great having you on today. I look going back to not only the the, the more active business tactic type of things, but sort of what's around the operations and learning from the failures.

You know, this is a this is a very unique episode for us. I enjoyed it. I'm sure that listeners did too. Would love to have it again some time.

Brent:

Awesome. Thanks, Dylan. Really appreciate that.

Dylan:

One. I heard you guys were hanging out with us to the end of the show by sharing a final from one of our sponsors, American Dream. You, the nonprofit designed to provide our veterans obtain the education and resources they're going to need in order to find their dream job or start their own business. They hosted events on military bases packed with the best speakers, tools and information.

It's thanks to our military that we live in a country where the entrepreneurial dream is possible. It's thanks to our military that we live in a country where the entrepreneurial dream is possible. This is their way of giving back. Check out their Facebook page or their website. At American Dream. You talk.